


A Lost Girl Named Daxter

by Mai_Blade



Series: a girl with someone else's name [2]
Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But No Actual Suicide, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possible Character Death, Reader Has A Name, Reader-Insert, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags Are Hard, Time Travel, is canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23031769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mai_Blade/pseuds/Mai_Blade
Summary: There is more than one way in which a person can be lost.Unfortunately, Jak learns this the hard way.
Relationships: Jak/Reader (Jak and Daxter), Keira Hagai & Jak
Series: a girl with someone else's name [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655395
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	A Lost Girl Named Daxter

**Author's Note:**

> An AU of A Girl Named Daxter, diverging in Terror in chapter three.

**Death ends a life, not a relationship.**

**~Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie**

* * *

**Lost**

Daxter doesn’t rise again.

No matter how long Jak waits and desperately hopes, his doesn’t catch even a glimpse of his best friend.

Daxter—who has been a part of his days for as long as he could recall, who hears him despite his inability to speak, who fills his days with sound, the girl who loves every season except winter, the only girl he’s ever kissed, the girl who makes him laugh—is _gone_.

Deep inside, something breaks.

* * *

**News**

The sun is halfway across the sky when Jak returns on the speedboat to Sandover Village. He returns alone, because he’s gotten his best friend killed.

Every footstep is heavy, and there is nothing left in his posture of his usual self. He should tell Keira and Samos, but there’s one person he should tell first before anyone else, the one person who has the right to know, the right to hit him and yell at him if she so desires to after learning of what’s become of her niece.

Arriving at Birdwatcher and Daxter’s hut, Jak knocks upon the doorframe, trying not to look in direction of Daxter’s room.

“Jak?” Birdwatcher turns from the window, lowering her binoculars. The old woman sounds curious, and then she blinks as though she just remembered something. She asks him a question that cuts him deep.

“Have you seen Daxter? She was gone before I woke, but she hasn’t brought in water yet.”

It doesn’t seem possible, but Jak slumps further, grief twisting his features.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen? Did she get hurt again? Is Samos looking after her?”

Daxter’s aunt has never been as good at reading him as she was, but then, she was the best at that. Not even Keira or Samos could understand him as well as she could without him repeating himself.

In the end, he has to bring Birdwatcher to Samos’s hut, and Keira is in the sage’s workshop when they arrive.

In halting motions, Jak tries to tell them what happened.

It doesn’t surprise him that Samos understands him first, because he’s the one who told them not to go to Misty Island.

“Daxter… is dead?”

Both Keira and Birdwatcher gasp in horror.

Jak doesn’t cry in front of them, but somehow he manages to nod his heavy head, eyes unable to meet any of their gazes.

Samos asks if he’s certain, and Jak nods again with Daxter’s last scream echoing in his head.

When Birdwatcher sniffles and weakly denies her niece’s death, all Jak can do is fall to his knees and press his head against the floor, silently apologizing the only way he can.

In the end, Birdwatcher goes home heartbroken, but she doesn’t hate Jak or even yell at him. Maybe she will later, and he hopes she does. He wants her to hate him.

He _deserves_ to be hated.

* * *

**Prayer**

Samos wasn’t there, but he must have been to Misty Island, because in trying to find out exactly how Daxter died, Jak nods when the sage describes the wide open vat of dark ooze. Samos solemnly identifies it as dark eco. That particular type of eco is dangerous because it can warp and mutate living things, and was deadly in high amounts. Each word adds a new weight to Jak’s guilt.

Samos doesn’t say the words, but Jak can hear them all the same: Daxter is dead.

Did Daxter die quickly? Or did she drown slowly, wracked in pain as it filled her lungs? Did it twist her as she sank into its depths?

Precursors, let her have died with as little suffering as possible…

* * *

**Warning**

The last thing Jak does before trudging back to the village was to wordlessly borrow a section of parchment and a quill he dipped multiple times in ink to draw something. When he finishes it, he gestures from Samos to the parchment on the table, but he doesn’t stay despite Samos calling his name. Keira follows him out the door, calling the boy’s name in concern, but Samos doubts the boy has even noticed that she’s been trying to comfort him since Birdwatcher left. Troubled, Samos floated over to the drawing and he noted the writing on it as well.

It was a simple crude drawing of Misty Island on one side and what seems to be Sandover Village on the other. On Misty Island, there are four stick people and blobs that look like Lurkers. Two are labeled as Jak himself and Daxter, while the other two are labeled as man and woman. The man, woman and Lurkers are circled with an arrow pointing to the drawn huts of Sandover. There is a sword and a club drawn over the slight arch of the arrow. Below that is the word ‘attack’.

Sighing heavily, Samos left the drawing to float listlessly to the center of the room.

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, was it? Daxter should have turned into an ottsel.

But then, the first Daxter he knew was male.

The Daxter who had been lost today was a girl.

Would that one difference be the end of everything?

Samos knew that Jak could become a fierce warrior. However, that journey had always been undertaken with Daxter by his side. Without Daxter, male or female, Samos could tell that something had gone out in Jak.

He would have to devise another way to motivate the boy. Haven City still needed him, and there was the more immediate danger of the missing sages and the two mystery figures in Jak’s drawing.

But what could be done?

* * *

**Foretold**

Peripherally, Jak is aware that Keira has come to see him. Her voice sounds tender and soft, but he doesn’t know what she’s saying. All he can hear is Daxter’s voice, telling him that he will be the death of her, and then her scream as she fell. She was right.

He’d been the death of her.

* * *

**Missing**

Keira shed tears as she reluctantly left Jak to his grief. Her friend hadn’t even looked at her. Rather, he hadn’t even seen her when she was sitting right next to him on his bed, gazing down at him in worry. At most, Jak’s ears twitched slightly whenever she said Daxter’s name, but even saying their friend’s name didn’t bring him out of his sorrow.

True, Jak seemed to have yet to shed tears, but wasn’t that somehow worse? Was his anguish too deep for even that?

Perhaps reality hadn’t sunk in yet. Perhaps he was too shocked to fully comprehend that Daxter-that Daxter—

Keira came to a stop, pressing a shaking hand against her mouth. She’d been jealous of Daxter, even a little mad that Jak had chosen the redhead over her, but she’d never, _ever_ wanted Daxter to die. Such a malicious thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. Daxter was as much a part of Keira’s days as Jak and her father were. They’d grown up together and now—now she was gone.

They didn’t even have a _body_ to bury.

Keira would never see Daxter again. None of them would. No doubt the rest of the villagers would know by nightfall, but none of them were as attached to the girl as Jak, her Aunt, or Keira was. They wouldn’t miss Daxter like they would. They wouldn’t grieve her the same way.

If this is how Keira felt for having just been friends with her, then how bad did Jak feel when he’d _loved_ her?

Tears slipped quickly from her eyes as Keira dashed home, trying to escape the reality that Daxter was _dead_.

* * *

**Apology**

True to Keira’s predictions, the rest of the village knew before sunset that one of the three kids had died on reckless escapade to Misty Island. Daxter was a girl and the deceased, so whether they did it consciously or not, the fault shifted to the boy, to the survivor. Jak was blamed for the demise of his friend, and Birdwatcher was either too heartbroken or believed that as well because she barely bothered to defend him. Of course, no one was outright malicious towards Jak—no, it was just an unfortunate tragedy, something that is sometimes only learned the hard way.

For the first few days, Jak heard little to nothing of the gossip going around the village. He stayed in bed for the most part, reliving the events that led up to Daxter falling into the dark eco. He wished he could go back and stop himself from being such a blasted idiot. 

No adventure was worth losing his best friend.

Something ugly writhed in his chest and gnawed at his heart, at his _soul_. His insides grew more crumpled with each day, his self-loathing deeper by the hour. He would never see or hear Daxter again, and it was all his fault. She hadn’t want to go to Misty Island, not really, but he had _insisted_ , and she had caved as she usually does when he wanted to do something.

She’s dead and gone, and he has no one to blame but himself.

( _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—_ )

He keeps apologizing to her but it doesn’t bring her back.

* * *

**Trouble**

Samos grew more worried as the days passed and Jak remained in his uncle’s hut, only eating when Keira prompted him, and sometimes not even then. His daughter was growing frazzled with worry, and truth be told, he shared her concern about the boy. What would become of Haven City if Jak didn’t recover from this loss and move on to become the hero he should become?

But, talking to the boy is less useful than talking to the rocks. At least the rocks will answer back in time, but Jak doesn’t even look at him. He’s growing filthy from his lack of hygiene, and tear tracks are now more noticeable on his dirty face. The loss of Daxter has crushed something vital in the boy, and Samos fears for the future.

Then, as if there isn’t enough wrong in the world, Sandover is now getting refugees from Rock Village, arriving by boat. Apparently a giant Lurker has destroyed most of the village, not to mention that the refugees confirm that the Blue Sage is missing. The Mayor is letting people settle in the village, but even the new life doesn’t do much to stir Jak.

Somehow, Samos doubts that this is how things went with the original Jak and Daxter.

* * *

**Hear**

The sound of crying brings Jak somewhat into the present moment. Who…?

Focusing his eyes, he sees the top of a familiar blue-green head and pair of slender arms on his bed. It’s Keira, and the noise is coming from her.

“—ak, you can’t. Please, please, I know it’s hard and I know it hurts, but she wouldn’t want you to be like this. What would Daxter say if she could see you now?”

She’d make fun of him. Jak is certain of that. If Daxter could see him now (what day is it?), she’d take a look at him, make a joke, and then get him out of bed. She’d laugh and pull his arm, or maybe pinch her nose and wave at him to keep away. And he would get up, because she’d be here. Or rather, neither of them would be here in the hut because they would already be outside exploring and having fun.

_She’s dead._

The thought of Daxter’s last moments makes his close his eyes, but now that he can hear her, he can’t tune out Keira anymore. She keeps begging him to get up, to eat, to not give up. It all sounds so unreasonable in a world without Daxter. What was the point, if he couldn’t see her anymore?

Keira hasn’t looked up to see that he’s staring at the ceiling rather than through everything. She doesn’t realize that he’s hearing her this time, out of all the other times she’s come and begged him to move. Her head is buried in her arms, but she’s close enough that he can still hear her sobs and words. She hiccups.

“—can’t go back in time, but would she really want to see you like this? Would she really want to be the reason that you wasted away?”

In that instant he can picture can picture how Daxter’s face would crumple as she realized that she was the reason he was unhappy and unmotivated. He can imagine how she’d blame herself if she knew that she was the reason he was—filthy, hungry, thirsty, in pain from where his skin had cracked open beneath layers of dirt. He can never remember a moment in his life where Daxter truly wished harm upon him, so why would that change with her death? Wouldn’t she want him to live?

It hurts to flex his hands, but he pushes through the discomfort as he sits, startling Keira into moving and looking at him. He can’t smile yet, and probably won’t for a long time, but he doesn’t immediately push her away when she throws her arms around him for a hug despite how filthy he is. He doesn’t let her hug him for long, though, and he sends her away so that he can start to wash himself.

She sniffles and wipes her face, nodding. “I-I’ll bring some green eco over this evening. A-and food!”

He stared at her through half-lidded eyes, but he was looking at her instead of through her.

She lowered her arm and clenched a hand against her chest. “I know this is hard, Jak, but we’ll get through it together.” She stood from where she’d been sitting on his floor, and left with a glance over her shoulder. “See you soon.”

He turned his gaze on the floor.

‘Together’, she said.

He felt a cold chill settle over his heart.

She could never replace Daxter. He won’t let that happen. She’s his friend, was Daxter’s friend too, but… He might not be the most observant person in the village, but even he noticed how the villagers had compared his friends against each other, how they had been surprised he had picked Daxter. She might be dead now, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to replace her.

Daxter was one of a kind.

There will never be another girl like her.

* * *

**Changed**

It takes three days before Jak returns to Samos’ hut, and only his daughter’s insistence had gotten the boy to come here. There was no mischievous gleam in the boy’s eyes, no grin playing around his lips. Without Daxter by his side, in blaming himself for what happened to the girl, it seems that Jak has grown up. Already Samos can see a hint of the angry warrior that he will become in the future after the dark eco experiments, but he can’t help but suspect that such a look wasn’t supposed to be on the boy’s face this early in his life.

Because of the refugees, Samos tells Jak of his plan to send him over to Rock Village, but before he can even consider sending him on the dangerous journey, Jak must complete training at Geyser Rock and then help restore power to the village by investigating the structures in the jungle.

Jak doesn’t bat an eye at Samos’ words and merely nods. He starts for the teleporter ring when Keira speaks up.

“Jak…”

The boy pauses and glances over his shoulder. Keira’s hands are clasped together.

“…be careful.”

The boy takes a moment before nodding once and then rushing to leap into the teleporter ring. He vanishes into the light, leaving him alone with his daughter.

“Daddy…”

He sighs.

“I know, Keira.”

Jak isn’t the same anymore.

* * *

**Absence**

Jak’s strength hasn’t fully returned, but he makes it through Geyser Rock without much trouble. Keira and Samos give him advice through one of Keira’s inventions, but it’s not the same as having Daxter nearby. Granted, he doesn’t think she would have made it through this training and she probably would have been left to wait near the teleporter ring, but at least she would have been within easy reach.

She isn’t, of course, and remembering that she isn’t waiting for him nearly makes him stumble to a stop. He manages to keep moving, telling himself to get used to Daxter not being around, but telling himself that only hurts.

Daxter’s absence isn’t something he can just get _used to_ , not right away. He’s going to have to adjust, to get used to missing her like he would miss a limb.

He doubts it’s going to be easy.

( _he’d hate himself even more if it was_ )

* * *

**Wish**

There are new people in the village, including three new girls who try to talk to him, but Jak isn’t interested in getting to know anyone at the moment. Keira, Samos and the original villagers are enough for him ( _but the most important person is missing_ ). He avoids them as much as he can, and the others let the newcomers know that he doesn’t talk.

Can’t talk, really. Samos says he should be capable of it, but Jak’s never felt the need to articulate with words. The sage theorizes that there’s some kind of mental block on him that prevents it, but with Daxter— _when_ Daxter had been around, she had learned to hear him just fine. Without her, he feels even less inclined to learn how to talk. He’s pretty sure he could talk just fine if he wanted, but…

There’s no point. The person he wants to talk with most isn’t here anymore.

So to avoid people and to get that Power Orb from the Mayor, Jak dives into the jungle to find out the cause of the power outage. He eventually finds and defeats some kind of plant monster, and then lines up the giant lenses in order to get the power back. The Mayor pays him the Power Orb, and Jak puts it away with the others he found. It pinches his heart to remember that his and Daxter’s hoard is all his now. 

He’d give up every single Precursor Orb and Power Cell for a single minute with her.

Of course, it’s not as though wishing makes a thing real, and he ends another day alone.

* * *

**Promise**

Between salvaging and the people in the village, both old and new, Jak finds enough Power Cells to power the shield on Keira’s zoomer; more than enough, actually. Keira finishes installing them as he stares out over the open lava.

( _would it be a quick death?_ )

“Jak.”

He turned to see Keira gazing at him in concern.

“You… you’re going to do your best to reach the other side… right?”

She chokes up on the last word, and his guts twists with guilt. He’d been that obvious?

He startled as Keira launched herself at him and grasped him in a tight hug and tried not to cry.

“You promise, right? You’ll make it to the other side, _right?_ ”

Jak furrowed his brows and closed his eyes. After nearly a minute, he brought his hand up and patted her back, nodding his head against hers.

He promised.

( _another day to wait before seeing Dax again_ )

* * *

**Repeat**

Samos and Keira came through the teleporter ring to join Jak in the wrecked hut that apparently belonged to the Blue Sage. The place was a mess, and Jak wondered if that was because of a struggle or if the place had been ransacked. It might have been both, considering that the teleporter ring had been inactive for a while, at least according to Samos, not to mention that the villagers may have come here to look to valuable before leaving. 

Jak had caught a glimpse of the giant Lurker that had chased the villagers from Rock Village, but Samos was more interested in what happened to the Blue Sage, and Keira had pointed out the structures sticking out of the water. Since most of the villagers had fled, the first order of business was to try to get the machine the Blue Sage had left behind to work so that Jak could get up the cliffs to deal with the giant Lurker. That meant more Power Cells, so he headed off to the structures in the water to investigate.

Deep below the water, Jak knew that this definitely wasn’t the sort of place that Daxter could have safely come to, not with the electrified water and all the other hazards. If she had survived Misty Island, then would this have been where she would have met her end? Only this time, would he have seen her die? Would he have had a body to bring back to the surface?

( _they didn’t even have anything to bury_ )

He can’t help but hear her words again.

_“You’ll be the death of me, Jak.”_

Why couldn’t he have been more cautious? When something is precious, you’re supposed to protect it, right?

So why hadn’t he protected her better? If only he had, then…!

* * *

**Intervention**

He has to jump to safety after reaching the end of another slope, and he finds a Power Cell there. Only, it’s a trap, and the platform shudders and falls slightly. Then the dark eco is rising but Jak can’t find it in himself to move. All he can do is stare at the dark purple substance that had swallowed up his best friend and killed her.

This is… this is his judgement, isn’t it? Or maybe the world making things even by coming to take him in the same manner it took Daxter.

He just has to stand there and it will be over in moments. He can see her again. He’ll be with her, like he should be. She would look at him and say—

_‘Move it, Jak!’_

He jerks at the sudden realization that Daxter wouldn’t want him to die. In Daxter’s eyes, they were going to live forever, and death would be a surprise, not something they would sit still for. Death had taken her, but she wouldn’t want it to come for him so soon after.

He jumped and ran and leapt, lighting up with blue eco as he tried to outrun the rising dark eco. Death was nipping at his heels, and part of him screamed for him to stop and let it take him like it had taken Daxter, but he kept moving forward. There’s no way Daxter had wanted to die, and he wasn’t going to hang his head when he finally caught up to her and have to tell her that he laid down to die so that he could see her again. The days without her are long and lonely, but the last thing he wants is for her to be the reason he gave up.

He’s not going to use her death as an excuse to die.

( _he’s afraid she’d never forgive him if he did_ )

* * *

**Incomprehensible**

He returns to the surface alive and makes it back to Rock Village. He rests for the night, and the next day he’s surprised to see someone still hanging around this place. It’s the Geologist, and she’s upset over the dead and dying lightning moles in the Precursor Basin. He herds the surviving ones back underground with the help of the zoomer, but that’s after he heals a massive clump of tainted plants with green eco. There are a couple of other things to do in the Basin that leads to him getting more Power Cells and Precursor orbs, and means he’s closer to getting the Blue Sage’s machine working.

He has to pause, though, when he wonders why he’s putting so much effort into things when Daxter isn’t around. Then he realizes that that is an answer in itself: he needs things to fill the days, to keep himself busy from remembering that Daxter is gone. However, night always comes, and with it, the darkness that lingers inside ( _the self-loathing, the guilt, the sorrow, everything_ ). Gritting his teeth, Jak forced his feet to move.

The Geologist wasn’t the only person left. There was a Gambler too, who was ecstatic to find that someone had broken the record in the Basin. The Gladiator who had broken the bridge fixed it, and Jak was able to reach the swamp.

Samos’ voice came over the radio again, and Jak was given the mission of disrupting whatever it was that the Lurkers were trying to do there. While trying to find where the ropes where connected, at one location he found the Flut-Flut on a trans pad. The sight of Daxter’s ‘baby’ knocked the breath out of him.

The baby bird spotted him and chirruped excitedly where she was waiting. She looked around as though expecting to see Daxter and—oh. Did this baby bird understand the concept of death? Did Birdwatcher explain Daxter’s death to her? Three people had been present when Sunny—named thusly by Daxter—was born, and that had been Daxter, her aunt and himself. Sunny would no doubt be most comfortable around them, and especially Daxter whom she had imprinted on as her ‘mama’.

Was Sunny still waiting for Daxter? Did Sunny not understand that she would never see Daxter again?

Sunny let him approach, even without Daxter present. He got in her saddle and the Flut-Flut let him ride her around, jumping from high platform to platform on command. She was a happy little bird, and when he returned her to the trans pad, she looked around again.

“Mama?”

He closed his eyes as light surrounded the baby bird and teleported her back to Sandover.

That poor baby.

It was going to be hard once she realized that she would never see her ‘mama’ again.

* * *

**Attempt**

It took a few minutes before Jak could start moving again, and once he did, he threw himself into his mission in this swamp. He met a strange man who lived in the area and got a Power Cell off him for helping him out. Then, after he cut the last rope and made the Lurkers drop whatever it was they were trying to pull out of the muck of the swamp, the sage said it was a good thing since they didn’t want the Lurkers to get it for any reason. With that, Jak left the swamp and returned to the machine where Keira was waiting.

He averted his eyes when she leant over to hold the machine’s handles. Keira had a great body, but looking at any girl just made him feel guilty.

With the boulder levitated out of the path, he left with Keira’s voice in his ears asking him to be careful.

If Daxter were here, she’d tell him to be careful too.

For her, he will try.

* * *

**Resolve**

After defeating the giant Lurker and making it back to solid ground, Jak wondered what Daxter would have said if she could have seen that. She would have cheered for him, after finishing screaming for him, he’s certain of that much. Would he have shined in her eyes, a hero who slew the monster?

( _he always shone, but he doesn’t know, and he can’t ask now_ )

Samos sends him further north, towards the Red Sage who has also closed his teleporter ring. Jak doesn’t fight or protest, because it fills the days. The excitement and curiosity that once clung to him like a second skin is missing, has been missing since Daxter fell into that pit of dark eco. He doesn’t explore for the sake of it, not anymore, and his fights are more vicious as he vents his anger on acceptable targets.

( _Keira had cried when she returned with the green eco to find him clawing his bleeding arms and she made him promise, another chain he accepted because she said Daxter wouldn’t want him to do that, and he could believe that of his best friend_ )

He finds the Red Sage’s hut and activates the teleporter ring to let Samos and Keira through.

That’s when he meets the mysterious strangers who plotted to attack the village. They are the ones behind the kidnappings of the other sages, though Jak doesn’t know why they haven’t already attacked Sandover. The old man mentions a citadel, but what really grabs Jak’s attention is the old man’s claim that dark eco can be controlled, that they’d learned its secrets.

Anger bubbles in Jak’s stomach. Dark eco took Daxter away, and these two study it like Samos studies green eco? From what Samos has said so far, apparently it’s warped this pair of siblings.

The two sages bring up something called the silos and from the clues in the conversation, Jak gathers that they’re filled with dark eco. They plan to reshape the world, but it sounds like they have to drown the world first. The female, Maia, laughs after saying they have big plans for Samos, and then they are gone.

All Jak can focus on is that they want what happened to Daxter to happen to everyone, everywhere.

He can’t let that happen!

No one else he cares about should have to die that way.

( _he couldn’t save her, but maybe he can save everyone else_ )

* * *

**Goal**

Samos says they have to stop Gol and Maia, and Jak silently agrees. Keira says the fastest way to their Citadel is through the lava tube, but they need more Power Cells to power the heat shield on the zoomer. Jak accepts her words as fact and heads out to find more.

He finds a pair of men mining a giant gem, but even though the smarter of the two is obviously wary and somewhat hostile, Jak isn’t interested in the gem in the slightest, no matter how big it is. This giant gem is nothing, and even if Daxter were with him, it would still be worth nothing to him compared to her. He’s just interested in Power Cells and will eventually get a total of two off of them.

The radio comes on, and Samos tells him about the Lurker presence in Spider Cave, so he makes that his next destination. After riding some carts, he arrives and is unpleasantly surprised to see more dark eco. There spiders and giant insects are one thing, but Jak _hates_ dark eco.

Dark eco took Daxter away, so dark eco is evil. If it were possible, Jak would eradicate every trace of it from the world.

For now, he’ll settle with dealing with Gol and Maia, and that means finding more Power Cells to head further north.

* * *

**Trickery**

He explores Spider Cave and disrupts everything he can find while also plundering Power Cells and Precursor Orbs. There’s another Precursor robot in the Spider Cave, and Jak wishes he had the strength to destroy it. As it is, all he can do is remove the Lurker presence, though he does note that some Precursor Orbs are out of his reach due to his lack of power.

Later he rides a gondola to reach the snowy mountains and fights Lurkers adapted to cold, dodges snow boulders and activates yellow eco vents. On Snowy Mountain, the thing that sticks out the most is the ice where he slid around trying to deactivate more of those switches with the barriers around them—he can’t help but think he would have liked to have brought Daxter there. After clearing out the monsters, he thinks they would have had fun sliding around. It was a new experience… and she wasn’t alive to join him.

He doesn’t linger on Snowy Mountain, though Keira does send Sunny again to help him. It’s been a few days since the swamp, and the baby bird visibly perks up at the sight of him. She looks around, asking again, “Mama?”

Jak doesn’t shake his head, but without Daxter showing up, the baby Flut-Flut droops her head in clear disappointment.

“Mama…”

Sunny lets him get in her saddle, but she doesn’t want to move. She remains on the trans pad, despondent. Jak can’t jump as far as he needs to for this next part, so he does something that makes him hate himself all over again. When Sunny says ‘mama’, he pats her neck and points ahead.

The baby bird believes him that her mama is on the other side and she moves. Jak uses the trick as many times as necessary, and when the final trans pad shows up, he gets off and faces her. Sunny tilts her head and looks expectant, like he’s supposed to bring Daxter out of nowhere, but…

“Mama?”

Jak shakes his head.

( _her little heart breaks_ )

* * *

**Cold**

Jak invades the Lurker fortress and kills all the Lurkers inside. The takes all the Precursor Orbs and Power Cells he can get, and then it is time to leave back down the gondola. As the ride slowly descends, Jak is left alone with his thoughts. As he watches the bottom get closer and closer, he once again can’t help but think of Daxter. If she was here, no doubt she’d be holding on to him with all her might, scolding him for bringing her onto ‘such a dangerous contraption’.

( _“You’ll be the death of me, Jak.”_ )

Shaking his head, Jak tried not to think about her prophetic words.

Reaching the bottom, he left the gondola and rode the carts back to the path. He returned to Spider Cave to see if there were any yellow eco vents, and there was, enabling him to get the Precursor Orbs he hadn’t been able to get close to due to the spiders.

After leaving the cave and counting his Power Cells, he realized that he had enough and returned to Keira. His friend smiled and went to work on upgrading the heat shield. She spoke, saying she had released more cooling balloons for him. He nodded slightly, only half-listening as he stood around, hating his inactivity.

The zoomer was ready not long after, and Keira told him to be careful. He nodded again, this time with a little more energy, and then he was gone, flying over open lava and focusing only on getting to the other side.

He would never tell anyone about how hard it was to resist the temptation to just… stop, and let it all end.

For all he was busy lately making headway north, he knew that there were empty days ahead, many long years without Daxter there by his side. Nights were hard already, so what would those days be like? Part of him doesn’t want to slog through the loneliness he fears, but the rest of him remembers his promise and the thought that Daxter would hate to be the reason he gave up and died.

Whatever comes after life, on the chance that Daxter will be waiting, he doesn’t want to meet her in shame.

( _risk having her leave him on her own accord, in horror at what she’d done to him by dying first_ ) 

He makes it to the end of the lava tube and activates the Yellow Sage’s gate, which is apparently practically the front door of Gol and Maia’s Citadel. However, only Keira comes through and is distraught, saying that her father is missing and was probably kidnapped by Gol and Maia. She pleads with him to save her father and softly adds on that she wants him to be careful.

Jak nods, replying to both her requests, and heads inside.

* * *

**Hollow**

After exiting a hallway, the first thing his eyes are drawn to is a Precursor robot behind a purple barrier. That’s when Samos speaks up from overhead, telling him it was about time he got there. He then went on to explain why he and the other sages had been kidnapped and basically told Jak to save the day.

…Jak is slightly impressed he could yell all that from where he was hanging in a cage rather high up.

He trawls through the Citadel and rescues the sages in the order of Red, Blue and Yellow, leaving Samos, Green, as last, though that’s more by design of the Citadel itself than any choice he would have made. The sages have to stay and do something with the barrier, and Samos sends Jak after Gol and Maia.

Remembering Keira and Sandover ( _and Daxter who is already gone_ ), Jak heads off with determination.

He ends up fighting a Precursor robot atop one of the so-called Silos, using yellow eco to attack it from afar and blue eco to leap out of danger. The silo is half open when something unexpected happens and four beams of eco collide to create—

**“White eco! It does exist!”**

Gol’s voice from the Precursor robot tells Jak what it is. He has no interest in it besides the fact that it’s something new on the battlefield and that Gol is shocked by it. Running for it, Jak grabs it and feels it course through his body, lighting him up in pure white.

**“Do something!”**

Maia’s fear makes him smile, and Jak lets instinct take over.

He launches the white eco at the Precursor robot and it hits, exploding the machine with such force that Jak has to look away, though he does notice that he is no longer glowing white.

Satisfied that the deed is done, he looks up—only to realize that the robot head that Gol and Maia had boarded is now falling towards him. Standing firm, Jak stared up at it as it descended and waited ( _for death and Daxter to greet him_ ), but instead of crushing him, it landed in the dark eco. Gol let out a horrified scream as it sunk and then the silo slammed shut, almost alive.

Jak stood there, not quite comprehending the situation.

That’s… it? No more threat of dark eco flooding the world? No more scheming dark sage to plot against them all?

( _nothing left but Daxter’s death to fill his days?_ )

Wordlessly, Jak slowly accepted that he couldn’t just stay on the silo forever. Numb, he turned and walked onto the platform that began moving, floating through the air and carrying him back to the top of the Citadel where the sages and Keira were now waiting.

They greeted him happily, but with a touch of confusion and concern because—

He just stared with a blank look.

* * *

**Cruelty**

Keira fretted over Jak as he made no acknowledgement of the sages speaking to him. Soon they were talking _about_ him instead of to him, but even then Jak just didn’t react. She put a hand on his arm and said his name, but he didn’t respond.

It would be several days before he came back to himself and started reacting more normally.

In that time, her father had laid claim to a gate that atop the Citadel, and the sage’s had otherwise divided the resources that Gol and Maia had accumulated. He had already hired people to move it to Sandover, but it would be some time before they were ready to activate it and see what would happen.

“Although, we need one-hundred Power Cells to actually activate it.”

Drinking tea with her father after coming from making sure Jak ate something, Keira sighed, half tiredly, half thoughtfully.

“There are a lot in the zoomer we could repurpose, and some left with Jak, but I think we’d still be short even then.”

“There might be some on Misty Island—“

Keira snapped. “Don’t you dare ask him.”

Her father looked surprised at her outburst and Keira had surprised herself as well, but her reaction felt right. She shook her head firmly. “Don’t ask him to go back there. That’s where… where… you know.”

Her father nodded solemnly.

That’s where Daxter died.

“I’ll go.”

Her father shouted. “Absolutely not!”

“Well, we’re not sending Jak! That would be _cruel_ , Daddy!”

Her father fell silent. “That… that’s true, but…”

She shook her head. “We’ll wait for the traders. They always have a few Power Cells, and it’s just a matter of making the right trade.”

He sighed and said nothing more, and Keira thought she had won that argument.

( _she did, and Jak never went back to Misty Island_ )

* * *

**Beginning**

It was early autumn when Samos had finally collected enough Power Cells to add to Jak’s in order to power the mysterious ring/gate-thing he had taken from Gol and Maia’s Citadel. The other sages had even turned over some kind of vehicle-machine that was apparently supposed to pair with the ring/gate thing.

Jak frowned. ‘Ring/gate thing’ is annoying to repeat… He decided to call it a gate since it looked like a giant version of the teleporter ring. Although, by that logic he should probably call it a ‘ring’, but he preferred ‘gate’, so gate it was.

He didn’t fight Keira and Samos over the Power Cells, even though some of those had been found, collected and hoarded by both him and Daxter in better times. They weren’t any good to Daxter dead or to him alive, so he let them have the Power Cells.

Normalcy had mostly returned to the village with most of the refugees returning to Rock Village to rebuild, but a few stayed because they liked it here. Of the original Sandover villagers, the Sculptor was depressed because his muse had disappeared and not come back. Birdwatcher, Daxter’s aunt, was busy with Sunny who was starting to accept the old woman as her new mama, though her health was still fragile after her grieving had left her without an appetite for quite some time. Jak’s uncle hadn’t come back yet, but he expected his uncle before winter.

Jak spent most of his time deep in the jungle since that was where he had fewest memories of his time together with Daxter. He was getting better at going to the beach and staying in the village, but it would still be some time before looking around didn’t cause him to flinch.

Daxter was everywhere in the village and on Sentinel Beach. He couldn’t… it was hard. It hasn’t even been close to half a year, and she was his best friend. He couldn’t simply move on like nothing happened. She was gone and it was his fault, and he has to live with that.

Sometimes the tears just sneak up on him, especially when his brain plays cruel tricks on him and makes him see her for a split second.

There’s no running away today, though.

Samos had insisted he be there for testing the vehicle and mystery gate. Jak had always had a peculiar luck with Precursor items, so he was ‘definitely needed’ for the test run.

He sat in the middle with Keira on his left and Samos on his right.

He pressed a heart-shaped artifact and in less than two minutes, the whole world went to hell.

* * *

**Caught**

Escaping the monster that had come out of the activated gate, Jak and the others held on for dear life as they raced through a tunnel of energy and light. Keira screamed as lightning suddenly struck the vehicle and caused it to explode, sending all three of them to fly through the tunnel unprotected. As the light ahead grew closer, Jak heard Samos shout in an echoed voice.

“Find yourself, Jak!”

He forgot those words as he fell from the sky and somehow managed to not die after hitting the ground. Heart pounding in his chest, Jak got up on his knees and looked around. This… what sort of place was this? It was nothing like Sandover or anything he had seen, though the underwater city was the closest equivalent, but even then this place was something different. It was… alien, in a way that Precursor ruins weren’t.

Movement caught his eye and Jak stood, staring warily at an approaching group of men in red armor, though they seemed to be led by the man who wore yellow. They seemed hostile, but by the time he realized that they were too close.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

These are the last words he hears before one of the men in red knocks his out in one blow to the head.

That’s the last time Jak sees the sky for months.

* * *

**Chaos**

Samos remembers that in the original timeline, when Daxter had been male and an ottsel, that he had been put in prison with his older time twin, which is currently who he is (and he really did try not to become an old, dried up log, but sometimes you can’t fight fate). He never did find out why his older time twin had been in prison, but with Daxter missing, Samos can’t allow himself to get captured.

The Kid, younger Jak, has been in the care of the Underground for a while by now. He of back then, The Shadow, was currently in charge of the Underground. He needed to get in contact with his past self in order to get Jak rescued two years from now, otherwise Haven City would be lost.

Working with himself sounds like a headache, but he has no choice. Keira should be fine, she hasn’t changed from the timeline he knew, but without Daxter’s voice to make her realize that Jak was nearby, that was something else he had to intervene in. He’ll probably get in contact with her earlier than before.

Precursors!

The loss of a single key person has thrown everything out of balance.

Samos hopes that when his past-self in this timeline goes back that the original Daxter will be there and that this whole mess is just a one-time thing.

* * *

**Likeness**

Keira thanks her lucky stars that the zoomers in this place, while more advanced than the one they’d all left behind, are familiar enough to her that she can work on them. Her skills get her a pair of used shoes, but it’s preferable to her nearly bare feet touching the filth that coats this city. Not only that, but her ability with tools also gets her some quick cash (and that’s so weird to use a paper and coin currency when all her life it’s been bartering and Precursor Orbs and Power Cells), so she’s able to feed herself on her first day in this place.

She hates it. There are too many people, and the very air is dirty somehow. She knows she’s going to be coughing for a while as her lungs try to get used to the new air. The tall walls and buildings block out too much of the sun, to say nothing of that monstrous palace piercing the sky. This place is apparently called Haven City, but it’s so far from _being_ a haven that she nearly cries.

She has no idea where Jak and her father are, so she’s going to be on her own for who knows how long. She can probably make a living as a mechanic, but she needs to find someone who will actually hire her. It’s starting to get late and—

One of the many posters plastered to one of the many walls catches her eye and Keira’s breath catches in her chest. Impossible.

The poster is faded and torn, partially hidden behind newer ones, but Keira can see enough. There is no color in the poster, just lines and a sketch portrait, but Keira’s known that face since childhood and wouldn’t mistake it in a hundred years. It’s the teeth that grabbed her attention first, followed by the familiar face shape, and the freckles are the last nail hammered home. The hair could be changed and wasn’t shown in color, but there was no forgetting that face, even with eyes closed as they were.

Time stopped as Keira stared up at a drawn picture of one of her childhood friends.

_Daxter._

Her heart jumped and time started moving again as she faced the poster and frantically read what words weren’t covered by others.

_‘—e the girl frozen in tim—‘_

_‘—eco pit over a century ago, not a d—‘_

_‘—ched her! Come see the myster—‘_

_‘—ime in thirty years! Two weeks onl—‘_

Keira didn’t _understand_. Was that really Daxter? No, it can’t be, right?

It can’t be. Daxter only died this year and this poster is saying she was found over a hundred years ago! That’s impossible. It can’t be Daxter.

And yet, isn’t a hundred-plus years enough time to build a place like this? To improve her zoomer to today’s standards when she’d left one behind?

But time travel is impossible! Isn’t it?

Keira staggered away before stopping herself. She looked back at the poster that held a girl that looked _so much_ like Daxter. What if she couldn’t find this place again? What if that was the only poster? She can’t help it if someone covers it, but it’s another thing to not being able to find this spot again.

Keira looked around and memorized the area. If she needed to, she could find this place again.

Turning her back on the poster ( _is that really you?_ ), Keira walked away, completely at a loss all over again.

What was going on here?

( _how would Jak react to that poster and that girl who looks so much like the friend he blamed himself for losing?_ )

**Author's Note:**

> I've been feeling very trapped by my stories and my New Year's resolution to finish 3 WIPs this year. I had 1000 words of this lying around because anyone who reads my stuff can tell I love AUs and AUs of AUs, so i decided to tackle it today. Hopefully this is the start of breaking out of my writer's block. :)
> 
> Alright, so it says 4 chapters (4 games), but there's no guarantee the story will go all the way to Jak X. The pairing is Jak/Reader right now.
> 
> I wrote this mostly to mess with Jak. xD


End file.
